


A Certain Kind of Courage

by cloudymagnolia



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Masturbation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 23:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6029032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudymagnolia/pseuds/cloudymagnolia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Astrid is strong, quick, and capable. She has always made sure that she does things The Right Way. So when Hiccup finds her in a -compromising- position...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Certain Kind of Courage

**Author's Note:**

> Imma just leave this here.

Astrid didn’t start her monthly bleeding until age fourteen . Her grandmother, constantly tsking over Astrid’s scrawny form, warned her mother that with hips as narrow as hers, she should consider herself lucky she’d started bleeding at all, and that she shouldn’t expect anything more than a pink dribble from between her legs.

So no one was more surprised than Astrid when her first bleeding came dark red, and so thick that she had to change the cotton pads in her undergarments four times each day -- even waking up in the middle of the night to change them to avoid soiling the hay in her tic. 

“She’ll bear strong children. Warriors,” her mother had said proudly when she had been inducted into the Lunar Council, the next dark of the moon.

For her part, Astrid would have honestly preferred the pink dribble. The bleeding was a distraction, a nuisance. It was yet another disadvantage she had to surmount as a woman warrior; something else she had to learn to master if she wanted to be the best.

And by age sixteen , she thought she had mastered it. She’d gotten used to the mood swings, the erratic flashes of anger, the endless washing, the cramps.

But what she hadn’t counted on was Hiccup.

More specifically, she hadn’t counted on Hiccup growing.

She liked Hiccup. She liked his bravery, his compassion, his quick wit, his ability to see what others missed. She liked how he respected her, treated her as his equal, and listened to her opinion. In fact, she liked Hiccup. He was the only boy on the island she had kissed, and she assumed in an abstract, distant way that she would be his wife someday.

But now, for the first time in her life, Hiccup was taller than her, if only by a few inches. His shoulders, arms, and back were filling out, becoming toned and lightly muscled.

Her mother and grandmother both had warned her that as her womb grew stronger, more capable of carrying a child, she would begin to desire the touch of a man. 

But her feelings for him and the older women’s warnings had done nothing to prepare her for the crackle of electricity that played just under her skin when they touched, or the shooting desire that made her gasp and clench her legs when he flashed her that crooked smile.

It was always worst in the week just before her bleeding. The daytime wasn’t so bad. There was always plenty to do on Berk -- she was just careful to keep herself busy, and if her treacherous mind began to wander too much, then there were always trees in the forest just waiting to be scarred by her axe.

The real problem was the nights.

Lying on her tic, with nothing to do but watch the stars from the window set into the loft roof, the swollen pressure between her legs could easily become unbearable. She didn’t know how many sleepless hours she had spent during the week each month when she was at her most sensitive, alternating between clenching and unclenching her thighs in the hope that that might relieve some of the heaviness and trying to lay perfectly still so as not to agitate herself more.

Sometimes, on those bad nights just before her monthly bleeding, even getting to sleep wasn’t enough - more than once she had awoken on her stomach in the middle of the night, her hips pressed into the straw beneath her, a dream of Hiccup still fresh in her mind.

Ruffnut had told her that there were ways of managing the desire that didn’t require a man - ways of satisfying the place between her legs - but Astrid had cut her off before she could elaborate further. It seemed somehow… unclean to touch herself there.

Besides, she wouldn’t take time out of her valuable daylight hours dedicated to training to try something so profitless, and she shared her house’s small loft with her grandmother. She would rather die than risk her overhearing in the night.

It remained, however, an increasingly scintillating possibility, and one that was occupying more and more of her sleepless hours. It had been an unseasonably warm spring, and now the summer was sweltering. It would have been hard enough to sleep at the best of times, without her body throwing up its own set of discomforts.

Tonight was her third near-sleepless night in a row, and her training had already started suffering for it.

She rolled onto her side, clenching her eyes closed, feeling the sweat pooling in the curve of her arms and the depression of her clavicle.

She made a decision.

She rolled out of bed and got to her feet, creeping near-noiselessly down the creaky stairs and out the front door, left open in the vain hope of catching a crossbreeze.

She walked around the house to Stormfly’s stable and fought back a pang of guilt. Dragons could sleep soundly in all weathers, and it seemed unfair to deprive her girl of sleep just because she was wide awake.

Stormfly seemed happy enough to see her, though, when she woke her with a tickle under the chin, the dragon rubbing the smooth side of her tail spikes playfully against her legs as Astrid got her saddled and ready to go.

Moments later they were in flight, and Astrid savored the feeling of the wind against her sweat-soaked face.

Her normal bubble of joy from being airborne was punctured somewhat by having to shift awkwardly in the saddle to keep the rocking motion of Stormfly’s flight from rubbing the flaming place between her legs - but that was alright. She wouldn’t be up here long.

She let Stormfly pick a direction and set the pace. Astrid didn’t much care where they went, as long as they got as far away from Berk as they could in a twenty minute ride.

Stormfly was well and truly in sync with her rider this night. No sooner had Astrid begun to think that it was near time to set down, she felt Stormfly angle her wings and descend towards a small island below them.

Although “island” might be too kind a word, Astrid realized as they got closer. Really, it was just an overlarge seastack, almost flat on top and covered with moss and small shrubs, only three or four times bigger than the stack that she and the other riders used as their jumping-off point for their flying drills.

Stormfly landed lightly, politely waiting for Astrid to dismount, before making herself comfortable in a patch of long grass. Astrid squinted - it was a clear, full moon night, but the surrounding seastacks cast dark shadows - and rolled her eyes. Dragon nip. She should have known.

Gingerly, Astrid sat, resting her back against her dragon’s cool, smooth hide. She bit her lip and - after a moment of thinking stern thoughts to himself - pushed her skirt and leggings down her thighs almost to her knees. At first, the grass beneath her seat and the air touching her most private place felt foreign and uncomfortable, but she pushed that from her mind. She was here to do a job, and she would do it.

She trailed a hand tentatively down her belly and through the patch of hair between her legs. At first, she was surprised at how dry her skin felt - she usually woke up with leggings soaked on nights like this - until her fingers burrowed between the two folds of skin covering the place between her legs and found the wetness underneath.

She wondered if she should have let Ruffnut explain how to do this, but quickly brushed the thought aside. She was desiring a man, and after all, she knew how the mechanics of intercourse worked: a man’s member became rigid so that he could push himself into the place between a woman’s legs - the place her monthly bleeding flowed from - and spill his seed. All she had to do was imitate the thrusting motion she had seen men make in jest with her own hand.

It turned out to be more awkward in reality than it had sounded in her mind. For one thing, with her leggings around her knees as they were, it was hard for her to get her hand deep enough between her legs. After a moment of struggling, she kicked off her boots and pushed her skirt and leggings all the way off, leaving them in a heap beside her, so that she could spread her legs wide, bending them at the knee.

That solved one problem, but she still had to hook her hand uncomfortably down and around to be able to push her index finger inside. Eventually she found a position that felt semi-comfortable and began pressing into herself.

She felt… not very much. Oh, the feeling of her finger sliding up and down her rippled channel was interesting, even somewhat pleasant, but it was doing nothing to change her wet, throbbing wanting.

She huffed, and took a moment to pause and stretch her wrist and hand. She tried again, this time pushing against herself harder. This was… better, she supposed; every once in awhile she would feel a dull throb of pleasure, but it would quickly spark itself out.

Astrid gritted her teeth, shifted her weight, and pumped faster still. She would find relief.

So single-minded was her focus that she failed to hear the approaching dragon rider, failed to hear the dragon’s four-footed landing, failed to hear the soft footsteps approaching her.

“Astrid?”

That she did hear. With a quickly-swallowed shriek she jerked her hand away from her private place and clamped her legs together, trying to protect herself from view.

“Astrid?” Hiccup called again, stepping out of the shadows cast by the neighboring seastack and into the moonlight. “Are you al-”

In the soft, white light, Astrid saw Hiccup’s eyes go wide. How could they not? Astrid was bare from the waist down, her skirt and leggings lying in a heap beside her.

She should have known this was a terrible idea.

To her horror, Astrid felt tears of humiliation begin to prick at the corners of her eyes. She swallowed them back.

Hiccup had whirled around, putting his back to her.

“Oh, Gods, Astrid, I’m sorry, I saw Stormfly curled up out here and came down to take a look, I didn’t mean to… mean to interrupt…”

She could hear his blush even with his face turned the other way. Oh, Gods, what must he think of her…? She scrambled to her knees, face flaming, and grabbed for her leggings. They were turned inside out.

“No, it’s fine, I wasn’t,” she sputtered as she fought to pull them to rights. “I mean, I… I… I wasn’t doing anything okay? Gods, I need to just go home…”

“No! No,” Hiccup interrupted, still with his back turned. “I’ll go. You stay, and, and, and, uh… finish… I just - Toothless!” he called.

There was no answering warble.

“Oh, for the love of -- the dragon nip,” Astrid groaned. Depending on how much Hiccup’s dragon had inhaled, he could be incapacitated for up to a half-hour. If ever there was a good time for a seastack to fall into the ocean, she thought to herself, this was it. “I knew I shouldn’t have come out here,” she found herself saying, shame making her loose-tongued. “I should have known Ruffnut was just messing with me - Gods, I’m so stupid -”

“Wait a - what does Ruffnut have to do with this?” Hiccup asked. The nascent seed of authority that had been growing in his voice these past months punched right through her nervous chatter. Almost in spite of herself, Astrid found herself answering.

“It’s nothing, I just fell for one of - for one of Ruffnut’s stupid pranks.” Something very like a sob was bubbling in her throat, and she gave up on her leggings altogether, reaching instead for her skirt. “She told me… she told me… I just haven’t been able to sleep, okay? And she told me there was a way to… to… to relieve this wanting...”

“Astrid,” Hiccup said. “Was this your first time pleasuring yourself?”

“What?” Astrid was so startled she tripped while trying to step into her skirt and sat down hard. “What are you… I don’t…”

There were several heartbeats-worth of extremely loud silence. She used them, in part, to get her skirt the rest of the way on and clamber to her feet.

“Boy,” Hiccup said finally. “They really weren’t joking about the Hofferson puritanism.”

“What was that?” she growled.

“Okay,” he said. His voice had changed. It was soft, authoritative, persuasive. Chiefly.

Gods. Her thighs clenched inside her skirt. She needed this night to end.

“First thing,” he continued. “Pleasuring yourself is definitely not something that Ruffnut just made up to mess with you.”

“Well then it doesn’t work,” Astrid snarled, then winced. She hadn’t meant to say that.

“Actually, I’m really very extra sure that it does,” Hiccup said, still with his back turned. “Gothi prescribes it all the time.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s different for men, with that thing dangling between your legs-”

“She prescribes it to women, too, Astrid,” Hiccup cut her off.

“Well then maybe it just doesn’t work for me,” she said.

“No - I mean -” Hiccup sighed. “Look, may I turn around?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and took a step back so that she was standing within the curve of Stormfly’s comforting bulk.

“Fine,” she muttered.

Hiccup turned around slowly, hands held up as if in surrender, until he was facing her.

“I’m pretty sure it should work for you,” he said. “Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

“What’s there to do right?” she snapped. “I know where a man would press into me, during intercourse-”

“I don’t think that’s how it works for women,” Hiccup said.

“You… what? How would you know?” she asked, a whisper of unease curling in her stomach. She knew she wasn’t the only one who had noticed Hiccup’s growth spurt, knew that girls - even those who were not their agemates - had begun to look at Hiccup with consideration in their eyes. And there were always… rumors about chief’s sons.

“I, uh…” Hiccup was blushing again - she could hear it. Her hands curled into fists. “Gobber sometimes makes me walk Big-Boobied Bertha back to her cabin after their card games in the forge.”

Astrid held her breath. In the distance, she heard a dragon sigh in high contentment.

“And?” she asked finally.

“And… well… she’s very talkative after a barrel of ale.”

Astrid found herself relaxing.

“Wait a-” he said. “You didn’t think…?”

Astrid looked away.

“What? No. Ew! No.”

“Okay,” she said. There was still a waver in her voice, but she had it under control. “So Big-Boobied Bertha talks. And you listen?”

“Well, yeah,” Hiccup said. She could hear him frowning. “When the time comes, I want to know how to please y - a woman,” he said hurriedly.

Astrid blushed. Again. With an effort, she raised her eyes to Hiccup’s face.

She licked her lips. She was fearless.

“How then?” she asked, a crack in her voice. “How does Big-Boobied Bertha say you should give pleasure to a woman?”

“It’s… uh,” Hiccup said. She saw him blink, twice, very fast. “It’s… higher. Above where a man would… you know. There’s supposed to be a kind of - swollen nib of tissue.” He waved his hands.

“I mean,” he continued after a second, “I don’t have any real experience with this, but…” he paused, mouth half-open, as if he wasn’t sure what he was going to say. “May I… show you?”

Astrid stared at him. Of all the things she had thought might come out of his mouth, that had not been one of them.

At least he looked about as horrified as she felt, hearing the words hit the air.

She made herself hold his gaze. His eyes were wide and anxious, colorless in the moonlight. This whole night was surreal, like a slice outside of time.

“Yes,” she said.

If he was startled by her answer, he hid it well. He crossed the ground between them in three short steps, his metal leg creaking in the still night. Gently, he took her hand.

She shuddered at the touch. Fear. That’s what this emotion was.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Hiccup said, voice soothing, as if she was a skittish dragon he was trying to train. He helped her to sit, using a hand on her shoulder to guide her back so that she was leaning against Stormfly again.

Astrid spread her legs, and Hiccup flipped up her skirt. She bit her lip. Her heart was pounding in her ears. Hiccup sat down next to her, and, still holding her hand in his -

Guided her index finger to a different place between her legs.

Oh. Oh! When Hiccup had said “May I show you,” she had thought…

Her whole body relaxed. This was better.

Really.

“There. See?” Hiccup said, when he heard her exhalation of breath. “This isn’t so bad, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, breath catching in her throat.

“Do you… think this is the right place?” Hiccup asked. His whole hand was covering hers, so that every motion was his, but only her own fingertip was touching her slick flesh.

“Y-yeah,” Astrid said, moving her hips experimentally. This felt… better. Right.

“Okay,” Hiccup said. “Now, if we kind of stroke it, like this…”

Her finger stroking up herself like that was almost… tickly. She stifled the mad urge to giggle.

“Okay, maybe not,” Hiccup said. “Let’s try a circle, then.”

His voice was the same soft, conversational tone he used when he was in the forge or in the dragon arena. It had that peculiar sing-song cadence that Astrid heard any time he was really concentrating on something - the entirety of his attention absorbed in a single task.

Astrid shuddered again, but this time it wasn’t from fear.

“Okay. Better, right?”

Astrid nodded. It was better. There was a whorl of skin just underneath the calloused pad of her index finger, and every time she circled it, a spasm of satisfaction would make her clench.

“Okay. Good. So, I’m just going to, uh, take my hand away now, and-”

“What? No! Wait.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d realized she’d said them.

They stared at each other in the moonlight. From behind Stormfly’s bulk, she hard Toothless give a low warble. It was… an encouraging sound.

“You-” Hiccup’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “You, uh… want me to stay? Here? Like this?”

Astrid nodded.

Hiccup inhaled slowly through his nose and exhaled through his mouth.

“Okay. I’ll stay.”

He replaced his warm hand over hers. She’d stopped moving as soon as he’d drawn away, and now they restarted the circular motion together.

“I think maybe we’re supposed to get harder and faster over time,” he murmured some time later. “Like this.” He pressed down on Astrid’s finger, pushing it into the little knob of flesh. Astrid gasped aloud.

“That was good, right?” he asked, eyes anxious.

“Yes - yes, it was,” Astrid said, voice so breathy that it almost didn’t sound like hers. “It was - good.”

“Okay,” Hiccup said. He did it again, and Astrid’s hips bucked into the touch. Her breath caught in her throat, and she forced herself to exhale slowly, as if she were mid-way through an endurance run.

Although there had never been that little whimper to her breath mid-way through an endurance run.

“Okay, this is-” Hiccup said. Vaguely, Astrid noticed that his voice was shaky, and higher than she was used to hearing it. “Astrid, I’m getting - I might -”

“Oh, shut up,” Astrid moaned. She was moving in time to his touch, now - her own touch, she mentally corrected herself, it was her own touch - and was speaking through clenched teeth. “What - what comes next?”

“Next?” Hiccup asked. He sounded strained and was breathing hard, but at the moment that wasn’t important.

“Oh… kay, well… I guess harder,” he pressed down harder, and Astrid sank gratefully into the touch. “And faster,” he continued, circling their fingers faster still. “And sometimes it, uh… helps… if you, uh, think about something that turns you on, like a fantasy, or a dream, or a,” she heard him swallow, “person.”

Astrid’s eyes fluttered open. She didn’t remember closing them. She bit her lip and looked at Hiccup, really looked at him, in the way that, lately, she had been trying to avoid doing. She looked at the always-messy mop of his hair; at his kind, soft eyes, beautiful even now when she couldn’t see their color; at his mouth, full and expressive; at his broad shoulders and toned arms and strong… hands…

She rolled her shoulders and arched her back.

“Softer,” she gasped. “Please. And faster.” The night air was suddenly cool against her flushed skin. Hiccup did as she asked, and she felt herself falling, tumbling through the air.

She hung, suspended, for just a moment.

Then she opened her eyes.

Abruptly, Hiccup let go of her hand.

“Excuse me,” he muttered, pushing himself off the ground and walking stiffly around behind Stormfly, where she couldn’t see.

“Hiccup?” she said, sitting up.

“I’ll be right back, Astrid, I just need to - need to take care of something.”

Astrid frowned up at the stars, half annoyed that Hiccup would leave her just now, half-worried that she had disgusted or disappointed him with her… needing.

After a moment, the muffled noises she was hearing resolved themselves into soft, semi-rhythmic grunts. They came to a head - Astrid felt her mouth pop open in a perfect “oh” of realization - in one long, low groan.

A few moments later, Hiccup stepped back into view.

“Okay,” he said, squatting down beside her, resting his elbows on his knees. “We’re good. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She paused for a moment. “Did you…?”

“Yeah. Sorry about that. I figured it would be marginally less awkward than coming in my pants.”

“Was it because of…?”

“Yeah,” Hiccup said, voice soft but sure. “You’re beautiful, Astrid.”

Astrid looked down. There were plenty of things she could think of to say - “Thank you,” or “I’m sorry,” or “I didn’t realize it would affect you like that,” or, on the outer edges of sanity, “May I watch you next time?” - but she opted not to say any of them.

After a moment, Hiccup settled himself so that he was sitting beside her, cross-legged on the ground, resting his back against Stormfly. He put his hands up behind his head.

They weren’t touching, but Astrid was… content to share this space with him.

They looked out onto the sea. Astrid hadn’t noticed before, but it was very beautiful tonight. The moonlight made the lapping waves look almost purple against the black of the seastacks and the darkest blue of the night sky.

“Hiccup?” Astrid said after a time.

“Hm?”

“Tonight’s been really weird. Right?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he said without a pause. “One of the strangest nights of my life.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Do… you regret it?” he asked finally.

“No,” she said. “Do you?”

“No.”

Astrid smiled and allowed her eyes to slip closed.

And in the end, their dragons had to wake them, when there was a tinge of pink on the horizon, and fly them back to Berk.


End file.
